1. Technical Field
The present invention is directed to managing a large distributed computer network and, more particularly, to providing centralized definition and storage of time-related expressions useful by distributed management applications that need to perform operations based on time schedules.
2. Description of the Related Art
Companies now desire to place all of their computing resources on the company network. To this end, it is known to connect computers in a large, geographically-dispersed network environment and to manage such an environment in a distributed manner. One such management framework comprises a server that manages a number of nodes, each of which has a local object database that stores object data specific to the local node. Each managed node typically includes a management framework, comprising a number of management routines, that is capable of a relatively large number (e.g., hundreds) of simultaneous network connections to remote machines. As the number of managed nodes increases, the system maintenance problems also increase, as do the odds of a machine failure or other fault.
One goal of managing a large, distributed computer network is to automate as many of the management activities as possible. Automated management for a large managed network theoretically involves the initiation of pre-programmed actions in response to network events and the needs of various management applications and application facilities. Potentially, many distributed automated activities thus would be guided in some way by time. For example, it would be desirable to schedule management activity according to local policy. Moreover, responses to exceptional events might need to be different depending on when the event is generated. Further, activity queuing will normally rely on schedule information for throttling and bandwidth control.
Because time and schedules are so prominent in any consideration of distributed automated management, appropriate architecture and implementation of time and schedule services are critical. Time and schedule issues extend from the user interfaces provided for creation, viewing, and analysis of schedules, down to low-level considerations of implementation efficiency.
Prior art techniques have not adequately addressed the need to provide adequate definition and storage of time-related expressions. Thus, as the managed network environment grows in size, it is more difficult to synchronize management activities in a meaningful way. The present invention provides a mechanism for the expression of time and schedule information in a distributed automated management system.